Thursday, July 06, 2006

This is not my country, goddammit

Usually, I go to Jesus' General for a good laugh and a decent dollop of snark. It's a milk-through-the-nose kind of place. Unfortunately, it was not milk coming through my nose that was coming up the last time I went to Patriot Boy, but me being honestly sick when I read this quoted at his site:

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit.[...]On the evening in August 2004 when the board was to announce its new policy, hundreds of people turned out for the meeting. The Dobrich family and Jane Doe felt intimidated and asked a state trooper to escort them.

The complaint recounts a raucous crowd that applauded the board's opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him "take your yarmulke off!" His statement, read by Samantha, confided "I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy."

...A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.

The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to "go back up north."

In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.

Really, I don't care what you think about the ACLU. I haven't been behind all their causes (I wish we were as laid back as the Europeans about religion - "Yeah, it's a big cathedral and we've always let our tax money pay for its upkeep but whatcha' gonna' do? Let's have a drink..."), but overall, I think they do good work. As an atheist, I'm not intimidated by anyone's religious beliefs, they don't make sense to me. However, it's amazing to me that American evangelicals are so insecure with their beliefs that they feel the need to toss tantrums about not getting their views (whatever those are) spray-painted on every curb in America.

Yet, when the scum who run the Stop the ACLU published the address and phone number of this family on their site in an effort to "expose ACLU plaintiffs", lines were crossed. Imagine if you wrote something on your blog that some pinhead extremists didn't like and they published your personal information on a website to incite kooks to prowl around your property (or do worse).

This is not my country, goddammit, not when shit like this goes down. It's a fucking embarasment. And the worst of it is, the fucknuts who did this seem to forget that Jesus was a Jew.

7 comments:

I was raised Jewish. In upstate New York (10 minutes from Yasgur's Farm). In second grade, I was told I HAD to believe in Jesus. The kids got....scary. I went home crying to my dad. He became OUTRAGED.

In second grade, I did not know Jesus was a Jew (a Rabbi to be more specific). Now, when imbeciles throw the "you have to accept Jesus" spiel, I say "Oh, but I DO, he was Jewish."

Usually shuts them up real quick.

Stories like this really anger me. I may not be the most religious person, but I AM of the mindset that every person is entitled to their own belief system. Just don't force it on others.

I saw that story. Just scary. The theocrats are incredibly emboldened, and they're on the war path.

And I'm sure you saw the desecrated Statue of Liberty in Tennessee, holding a gigantic cross? As Sinclair Lewis famously said, when fascism comes to the US it'll be holding the cross and wrapped in a flag. Some say it can't happen here... But plenty of Germans thought the same thing.

I am not sure how I got to your blog. Once here, I read you response to that anonymous dolt. Which led me to reading this post.

For a religion that is supposed many claim is about love, there sure is a bunch of hate.

I am pretty sure that the residence of this particular town, are very unlike the residence of Lake Wobegone. I've often wondered if all the children there are above average, where are the people that off set that.

As it turns out they're in slower lower delware. Which until just now I thought was a geographical term.